SEOClass

Text Link Ads: Buy Your Way to the Top?

2011-04-18T00:41:00.001-07:00

Why get involved in heavy search engine optimization when you can get the same results with text link advertising? Many site owners face this conundrum right now. The truth is that if you do both, your site may be unbeatable. Or, you may enjoy no benefit whatsoever, as the search engines strive to avoid counting paid text links in ranking any given site. Text link ads are, therefore, a very hot topic.

Yes, text links taint results, and the search engines haven’t quite found a way to deal with them as yet. Until that happens, text links will continue to be the ranking technique of choice for many site owners. Why? Because text links can work to increase a site’s rankings with the search engines.

The ethics of this decision deserve your consideration. So, rather than try to encourage you to use, or avoid, buying text links, I’ll simply state the facts and let you make up your own mind about this particular practice.

The Evolution of the Text Link
When search engines such as Google began to rank Websites based upon the number and quality of sites that linked to them, those search engines created a digital cottage industry called link placement. Emailing for link swaps was wildly popular with some, while others placed banner ads containing direct links to their own sites. Both solutions fit well with search engine’s immature algorithms.

Since then, search engines have vastly improved their systems for the filtering or removal of paid advertising links. Some of these steps have turned out to be unfair to many smaller Websites that are not connected to the larger Web publishers. As Google changes its algorithm, so the shape of the Web changes with it.

However, text link ads, or sponsorships as some call them (excluding Google Adwords ads, which Google can screen automatically), fit into the Web page less obtrusively than other ad units, and are often less easily identified as advertisements by the search engines. To this day, the search players have real difficulty distinguishing between a purchased link and a normal hyperlink. This will undoubtedly change in time, though, as the search engines’ objective is to produce relevant search results that aren’t influenced by advertisers’ money.

Link Popularity and Link Reputation
Although search engines do assess the number of inbound links to a Web page when ranking that page, the quality of the link is seen as more important than the quantity of links. Although your link may be placed on every page of a sponsored site, don’t expect Google and Yahoo! to give merit to this plethora of links. Some site owners are now varying the wording of the links they place on other sites, but this tactic will probably be filtered out soon.

The phenomenon of link buying has occurred because Google has tightened its algorithm to weed out links between topically unrelated sites, and within link exchanges. Unfortunately, most Websites have these types of links. This fact means that millions of Websites have been put out in the cold by Google’s action. Sites that belong to big corporations or publishing empires are more likely to be topically-related, and they may be able to garner links from authority sites that are on-topic and have high Pagerank. The only way in which smaller Websites could compete is to buy links on these major sites.

One other recent phenomenon has given the minor sites a boost, though: blogs. The success of blogs may actually be due, in part, to Google’s new algorithm â€“ they’re currently dealing with this problem in unison with Yahoo! and MSN. But in the meantime, comment links on blogs have become the spammer’s tool of choice. Once the search engines devise a way to ignore this form of spam, spammers will most likely turn to text link ads.

Text Link Ads Get Clicks Too!
Text links have a surprisingly high clickthrough rate compared to graphic banner advertising. Advertisers know this and many have abandoned banners in favor of text link ads. Although buying links to your site isn’t in the spirit of organic search engine indexes, the purchase of text links is revolutionizing search engine optimization.

Buying search engine rankings certainly doesn’t sound ethical, yet those who don’t buy links, and who don’t set aside a good part of their budget to the acquisition of paid text link ads, can find themselves at a decided disadvantage. A quick look at the top ranking sites will reveal that most gain their rankings through paid text link ads. These text links, though small and seemingly insignificant, are in fact very powerful.

So, you’re aware of the pitfalls and the potential benefits. If you feel buying text links is unethical, or a waste of your time (after all, the search engines will likely find a way to avoid attributing any value to them), then it’s one less task to put on your SEO to-do list. Great! You might want to skip down to the last section, "Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox" for the wrap-up.

If you’re curious as to how the purchasing and link placement systems work, however, we’ll consider this next.

What Advertisers Seek in a Host Site
Websites that are ranked for the same keyword topic as the advertiser’s site, or offer material that relates to the keyword topic of the advertiser’s Website, are the most valuable places to place a text link ad. If the advertiser’s site is about pet supplies, for instance, they’d look for sites that deal with pet supplies, veterinary services, pet shops, kennels, pet care magazines, animal training, or dog shows.

It’s best for the advertiser to stick with the exact keywords for which they’d like to rank, but related words and synonyms can also be helpful. If they’re placing a lot of text links, the advertiser might consider varying the copy to help prevent their being filtered due to duplication. The keyword supplies is related to suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers. The advertiser would make sure they got a link from their supplier or distributor, and even from the manufacturer in their product category.

Optimizing Text Links
The advertiser’s text link ad will use their targeted words in the title area. They might also use stemmed variations of those words, and related words, in the description. Some text link ads use keywords only within the anchor text, as in the following examples:

The second example uses keywords, related words and synonyms. It may even sound awkward, but the advertiser’s goal is a search engine ranking boost, not ad copy awards.

The second example above is more powerful because search engines analyze the text near hyperlinks to better understand a link’s true meaning. It’s a complicated process. Advertisers may also use the link title tag, however, if their link is out of place with the rest of the links on that page, as this may tip off the search engine that the advertiser’s is not a regular link.

To acquire text link ad placements, many advertisers contact site owners directly, or use any one of a growing list of text link ad brokers. These businesses act as a go-between, matching seller to buyer — a quick search online turns up numerous such services. Generally, the services allow advertisers either to bid on a link or to buy them outright on a monthly or yearly basis. Most times, though, advertisers aren’t able to see the host site before they buy, so they ask a few key questions before they purchase:

They make sure the site doesn’t use tracking code on the link, since tracking code identifies it as a commercial link.
They research whether the site has their targeted keywords.
They identify whether the pagerank is on the low end or high end of the stated PR level.
They identify the keywords for which the site has rankings, and what those rankings are. If it ranks 450th for its keywords, it will be unable to pass on much, if any, value to the advertiser.
Obviously, link buying can be perilous in the sense that advertisers may not get much of a return on their investment. However, companies with huge advertising budgets may buy so many text link ads that even if just half of them produce, they’re going to do well.

Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox
One of the reasons Google had to delay the appearance of Web pages and sites in its index is because of paid text links. The impact of this approach began with the infamous Florida update, in which some sites had to wait up to eight months for Google to recognize new links to their site. Google couldn’t distinguish between illegitimate and paid links, so it just put all new links on hold to thwart link buyers. If you were paying $1000 a month for links, and you didn’t see any rank increases for 8 months, you’d be deterred from link buying in the future!

One downside to Google’s filtering of paid links is that innocent links can also be deleted along the way. There are many appropriate and naturally occurring links that aren’t counted by Google because of the keyword topic, they’re position within a page, or their appearance within the link patterns between a certain range of Websites. If your link is the only one on the page, Google may not count it. So, the last word on paid text link ads is that they might not work for you.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have the resources to study the paid link issue and develop effective screening solutions within their search algorithms. Since it isn’t easy to detect paid links, and because text link ads are so pervasive on the Web, there is plenty of room for some strategically developed and placed text link ads to squeak through the filters and help the advertiser rank highly — but for how long?

reproduced from http://blogs.sitepoint.com/text-link-ads-buy-way-top/

101 Advanced Tips For Text Link Ads purchase

2011-04-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

You need discretion to buy text links effectively, and there’s more to it than just avoiding paid link networks. Here are 101 tips to reduce your risk and maximize value for money the next time you buy links.

A few quick notes before I start:

1. Some of these are “paid links” that come with the purchase of something else. I’ve included those to create a comprehensive, go-to guide on buying links.

2. Sites named here are just random examples; I’m not saying that any of them buy links. They’re just for illustrative purposes.

3. Some of these tactics – especially #5 – is in a gray legal area, so you’d be wise to consult a lawyer before attempting any tactics that common sense suggests may run afoul of the law. They’re in here mostly for entertainment purposes and to help you think creatively.

4. This article is mostly just a long-winded version of this 1 simple, old link building tip. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but you can’t eat wit for breakfast…

Without further ado, here are my 101 advanced text link buying tactics
1) Buy a tweet with a link from someone whose tweets are syndicated [without the nofollow] on their blog or elsewhere.

2) Pay for a spot in web and/or graphic designers’ portfolios.

3) Buy links to your linkbait content pieces. It’s more credible than getting a link to your ‘buy now’ page.

4) Pay for ReTweets or StumbleUpon traffic such that the links you buy for your linkbait can credibly be explained as organic.

5) You can dress your text links up as AdSense. AdSense is ubiquitous, so one more block of ads should suffer from the same banner blindness as all the rest. (Note that this is for illustrative purposes, only; check with your lawyer before doing this, as there are likely TM issues.)

6) Dress your paid link up as a CPM ad network spot, with the requisite redirect URLs that have incredibly long-character-strings. These traditionally use 302s. Yours will use 301s.

7) Have someone ghost-write a WordPress theme where you get to release it and claim to be the author – you get to have the ‘designed by XYZ’ links. This is not to be confused with buying a footer link in a theme that isn’t the ‘designed by’ link.

8) Buy a spot in a link roundup, whether it’s a list of resources, bloggers, blog posts etc. There are as many ways to do this as there are list posts!

9) Buy a text link in a ‘How Not To Do ABC’ post. These are popular in the web design community, such as the famous Web Pages That Suck. (Note: I’m not suggesting that site sells links; it’s just an example.)

10) Pay for inclusion in some widely syndicated ‘Recent Blog Posts’ widget. For example, SEO Chat distributes widgets you can put on your site featuring their most recent blog posts.

11) Buy family. Wouldn’t you like to be part of the Gawker media network, or the Tribune Interactive network (with such sites as the Chicago Tribune and LA Times)?

12) Buy a membership in some business association. Ex.: Chamber of Commerce, SEMPO.

13) Pay to be cited in some news article. Be the expert giving the journalist his quotations… instead of your stingier competitor (who’d just say the same thing anyways).

14) Build paid links by circulating a meme .

15) If you run a community site and/or an aggregator, you can have bloggers link back to you with their post tags or categories. Think Technorati.com

16) Buy text links via classified ads that let you include a link.

17) Make a donation to a charity.

18) Buy [ranking] content and redirect it .

19) Send someone a gift.

20) Buy a forum link signature. Or buy 100, as they’re usually sold by the caseload anyways ;).

21) Buy a link in the ‘friends’ sidebar category, which is inherently a little random/offtopic (unless all your friends work in the same industry!)

22) Buy a guest-contributor link in the masthead of a magazine.

23) Pay bloggers you hire to add “guest author badges” to their sites, which badges link back to you.

24) Send webmasters holiday greetings. A parking provider I worked with did that for me once and it made them stand out in my mind. Small gestures can go a long way. Like $20 bills in ‘hope you’re having a nice January 17th’ holiday greetings ;).

25) Pay to be interviewed 1-on-1 by a blogger.

26) Pay your own bloggers to interview others, so that the “hey, I was interviewed at this site” link goes to you.

27) Work link requirements into standard contracts with suppliers.

28) Offer discounts to clients who link to you from their sites.

29) Buy links to your free sample contracts or aspirational documents. Bruce Clay Inc could buy links to its SEO ethics guide, for example. Ditto Creative Commons, legal info sites offering sample documents etc.

30) Buy a partnership from the site’s “Partners” page.

31) Buy affiliate links.

32) Buy fake affiliate text links, which are really just a URL parameter and 301 redirect. Or those of you on WordPress can go with a URL shortener plugin and get creative…

33) On a related note, you can combine techniques 31 and 32 to buy a batch of links from any given blogger. 7,000 bloggers use my Internal Link Building plugin, many of whom have it auto-link externally to affiliate products they endorse. Whenever the product is mentioned on their blog, the plugin automatically turns it into a link. Have them set up your link with the Internal Link Building plugin.

34) You can make this even smoother by imitating the pattern with legitimate affiliate links, where bloggers use a redirect folder for their affiliate links. This tends to look like bloggersite.com/recommended/product or site.com/go/product .

35) Pay for people to install your social proof widget. Instead of Hacker Safe, how about they install “The World’s Greatest SEO Had A Drink With Us At SMX, Which Makes Us Cool” badge? Besides, this is guaranteed to lift their conversions. Or the bounce rate, whichever comes first alphabetically.

36) Buy a publicity stunt. Have someone make a replica of Chris Sherman out of macaroni and cheese, on your behalf.

37) Purchase a spot in those 1999-era “Pages I Like” resource pages. It’s similar to the blog resource list roundups, but here you’re getting yourself added to an existing page, rather than creating one from scratch. Also, these usually aren’t on blogs. You can include the money incentive as part of your normal approach to ‘the reciprocity method‘ (no, it’s not about reciprocal links).

38) Buy reciprocal links.

39) Pay people to use your creative commons licensed pictures, with a link credit back to your site. You’ll need to take some nice pictures for this to work.

40) Buy stock photography for others and trade it for a link.

41 – 50) Repeat tactics 39 and 40 with video, audio, slide show, webcast or flash embeds.

51) Buy things for people that are on their wish lists at a given retailer in exchange for a link.

52) Adopt orphaned WordPress plugins and bring them up to date.

53) Sponsor a whitepaper, webcast or other educational material.

54) Create something controversial, then hire forum members in the relevant communities to start “Did You Guys See This??!” threads. The more initial comments you can get on the discussion, the better. You can also try this with sock puppet accounts, but they’re more likely to be flagged as spam than if established community members do it.

55) On Q&A sites, have established members ask a question that people have about your product category. Pay other members to answer with multiple links to articles that you and others [who don't compete with you] have written on the topic.

Mixing in your link with others makes it harder to tell that there’s payment going on, as opposed to only dropping a link to your own site. This avoids getting the link removed as spam.

Bonus points if the Q&A page ranks afterwards…

56) Buying text links can also be done to reinforce existing links, and thus distance you from the risk. For example, suppose you got a link organically from some Q&A site. Why not hire members of that site to reinforce that page with internal links to it?

57) Buy traffic, video embeds and/or links for your Youtube video. What are the odds Google will penalize Youtube? They’re pushing it into the SERPs harder than ever, with 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 videos in one search results page!

58 – 60) Buy links for your Google Places, Knol or Profile page.

61) Make a $1M donation to McGill’s Law Faculty. Ok, fine, I’m being facetious. The cheque goes to McGill Law’s webmaster.

62) Pay for a table at your local college’s career day.

63) Buy an interactive ad with several [non-SEO-value-passing] links embedded in it. Image-map a portion of it to link to your site. Get creative with what portion you image-map.

64) Buy links for your competitors in the same place(s) you buy links from. But make the links go to nonexistent locations, either because they never existed or they expired and weren’t redirected etc.

Initially, it will appear like the linker is just mentioning some of the players in the industry (e.g. “For SEO, try firms A, B and C.”). Later, the links to competitors can be removed since they’re link rot. The idea is to make the item look clean initially, and then reveal its true nature. It helps if you have the competitors’ names be deliberately misspelled so that they don’t show up on reputation management dashboards.

65) Buy links in ‘related posts’ sections of blog posts.

66) Ask bloggers selling you ‘related posts’-links to also link to non-competitive bloggers in the same ‘related posts’ area. Your purchase thus flies more easily under the radar. This is like the foliage that lets a camouflage suit blend into the background.
QNA SITES…

67) Set up dummy sites that you “buy” the ‘related posts’-links for, while including your real money site in one of those secondary sites you ask to have included in the foliage. This cuts the risk that the blogger will name your site if competitors or others ask about paid links.

68) Buy text links that will help you establish a brand in your niche. If you can build a brand before you get banned, you have a winning hand. (Inspired by ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you have to acquit.’ )

69) Buy advertising so that you can get the associated editorial news coverage.

70) Buy a spot in a trade-show, cocktail meeting, or tweetup wrap-up post.

71) Find a social way (eg Twitter) to contact your prospect for a link that doesn’t involve email (or gmail). Via Joshua Sciarrino / Refuge Design.

72) Buy links to a tweet of yours. Again, you’re one-step removed from the risk. The advantage over buying links for pages on Google is that a Tweet page is hyper-focused on 140 characters, including your link. It’s like ranking an AdWords ad.

73) Buy a negative review or complaint regarding your site. Best to make it from some obscure blog so that it doesn’t rank.

74) Create a social media community and buy links to profiles. (And if you run a social media community, you might want to revisit that member list for members named Buy Viagra …)

75) Purchase installations of your social media community’s ‘vote this up’ badge. It’s a decent way to seed the badges anyways, if you approach influencers in your niche.

76) In hyper-competitive markets where every search for “blog” + your main keyword turns up a competitor, look at related keywords. EG If you’re working on an SEO site, look up SERP analysis. This will help you find genuine writing on the topic that was not written specifically for search engines. (As opposed to “10 Ways To Buy Your Health Insurance From Me”…)

77) Create a contest and pay people to participate in it.

78) Buy an “rss-feed-only” link from a blog who you know is syndicated by scrapers (eg to get the scrapers to link to you).

79) Find “top movers” charts and similar items, then pay to influence whatever metrics the rankings are based on so that you rank high enough to get a link. Of course, this would probably be a pretty expensive link unless you got a little crafty with the metrics and the data input…

80) Pay to have your link dofollowed on sites that moderate the comments and allow some to be dofollow.

81) Buy priority access to key news releases from important organizations. This is based on the idea that people reporting [important] breaking news get links. Think TMZ and Michael Jackson.

82) Imagine nutty news and pay for people to talk about it. This way, you can go for the conspiracy theorist community. (See #32) Disclaimer: Aliens don’t have a great interest in mortgages, credit cards or viagra. (Unless they’re aliens of a certain age…)

83) Buy inclusion in CSS galleries. CSS galleries show off sites that look good by making creative use of CSS.

84) Bribe people at conferences with chocolate chip muffins, when you know the conference had a crummy breakfast/lunch. (Sadly, SMX‘s food is too good to make it susceptible to such tactics.) Via Keri Morgret, who sells model battleships.

85) Disclose the risk in selling links. And pay a risk premium. Competitors may suggest the nofollow attribute to your link sources, and being up front in this way can mitigate that risk.

86) “Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the proceeds to charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.” (#60)

87) Buy most of your text links without optimizing the anchor text.

Most of your organic links will come with your name as anchor text. Your paid links should be the same, if they’re going to blend.

88) Heed the hub patterns in your industry, so the sources of your paid links match those of competitors’ organic links.

Got a job site? Pay for colleges’ career development offices to link. Got a hotel? Get conventions, events and conferences linking. Got a software site? Create the free trial versions and distribute them to the freeware sites.

89) Don’t mention your site in an initial email or phone message. That’s taking silly risks, as you don’t know if the person is open to it or not. They may even be connected to a competitor or might spam report you. Michael Gray has more on avoiding Kamikaze SEO.

90) Purchase vanity-bait links. Vanity-bait links are where you cite and compliment other bloggers in the hopes of them mentioning you in return.

One common example of this is Top 100 Bloggers In {Niche X} lists. Those lists aim to get those top 100 citing them back…

For example, write a commentary on a popular meme, and cite others who’ve commented on it. Throw in some compliments as to the strength of their analysis.

Then buy links saying things like, ‘John commented on this topic too and aggregated a bunch of key ideas from around the blogosphere.’ The compliments serve to make the links look like authentic vanity bait.

(Adapted from SEP’s 75 Ways to Build Links, )

91) Follow the principles of linkable content to defend the credibility of your paid links. Hold off on ads, proofread your grammar and spelling, use quality graphics…

92) Instead of buying links purely based on contextual relevance, buy your text links based on demographic targeting.

It’s no secret that coupon sites skew towards moms, especially those who are at home. Why not buy links from the myriad work-at-home-mom blogs? David Szetela of Clix PPC Marketing always lectures on picking content-network keywords for the demographics…

93) Ignore Dave Szetela and go the traditional contextual relevance route with your content-network campaigns on AdWords. This lets you identify relevant sites to buy links from. (#7 via Tom Critchlow).

94) Pay off Wikipedia editors to protect your link addition to ranking Wiki articles. This works on the rich-get-richer principle of link building.

95) Hire publicists. “Press agency employees usually know the right people in the right places, which can result in a higher acceptancy rate of your press release.” (#59)

96) Encourage staff to contact their family and friends to get you links. Heck, make it a company-wide contest and see who can get the most and the best links. It’s up to them whether or not they buy the links…

97) Get links from other companies’ staff bio pages. “Joanna does graphic consulting on the side, in which capacity she is working on ‘Your Site Name.’”

98) Create fictitious, citation-worthy characters whose names include a keyword. This works for exotic keywords, but probably not for common words like “refrigerator.”

99) Follow seasonal patterns related to your industry. Now, in mid-October, the candy and costume markets are feeding newspapers with stories about safe trick or treating. Yyou’d be well advised to buy links that flow with the time of year, too.

100) Be a RAT. Or at least know the rat.

100) Hire a professional. Like yours truly. Or Search & Social. Michael Gray. Wiep. Brian Chappell. Social Media Rockstar. (I don’t know if Brett still buys links though, given his social media success.) Alliance Link. Search Engine People.

101) Buy a spot in an SEJ list-post advertorial about text link buying… Kidding, I swear ;D.

Conclusion:

One thing I tried to demonstrate in this article is that you can take virtually every organic link building technique and achieve the same thing with money.

You can earn links to your linkbait or you can buy them or both. You can develop relationships with bloggers, Wikipedia editors, hubpage curators etc… Or you can pay them.

Practically speaking, the net result is identical.

So unless the quality rater team emails every webmaster around to inquire about intent, there’s no way to ever be sure if a link was paid for or given freely.

Which is why Bing and Yahoo sensibly count quality paid links and reject the junk.

I’d love to hear your comments below! Note: Please stow the personal attacks and propaganda about how paid links don’t work, since you’ll just be moderated as noise. They work, there’s a risk to them, we minimize the risk, now let’s move on.

This article was written by yours truly, Gab Goldenberg. I offer link buying services focused on 1) Minimizing risk, 2) Passing ranking value 3) Maximizing value for money with rankings, referral traffic conversions and demographic/psychographic branding.

Gab Goldenberg is the owner of SEOROI a full service SEO and link building firm which offers SEO consultation and link acquisition strategy or email Gab at Gab@SEOROI.com. SEO Services For Serious ROI. Blog Posts For Serious SEOs.

Reproduced from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-tactics-buy-text-links/13578/

How to buy links without being punished

2011-04-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

The types of link buys that Google has a distaste for are the links that are exchanged directly for cash. Modify your way of thinking just a little and there are a wide array of easy to buy high value links awaiting your purchase. The key to having a low risk profile is to make the link appear indirect.

Most links occur because of a value exchange of some sort. People link because

■they find a resource to be valuable
■they get paid directly for linking
■they get paid indirectly for linking

Here are 16 indirect ways to buy links without looking like you are on a link buying binge.

Testimonials: Best thing ever. Buy now! ;)
Testimonials help increase sales because they are a sign of social trust. Many content management systems, web designers, programmers, and web hosts offer links to featured clients. Some keep full directories of sites using their services, while other sites, such as Pligg, also allow people using their software to buy an ad on the official software site.

Conferences: By paying to attend a conference and being social there some people may reference you on their blogs. Some conferences also list speakers, post an official list of attendees, and highlight sponsors with direct links. Giving away t shirts or coming up with viral games (such as drinkbait) will get you links.

Association Memberships: Trade organizations tend to have significant global authority and topical authority. In order to push the agenda of the organization many of these list members to show proof of social value. These links are often priced far below their value, and contributing directly to associations is a way to also get significant exposure in front of the type of people who are likely to buy from you and/or link at your site.

Contests: People are competitive animals. Contests like the Mahalo Follow refer a friend program also move the spamming activity away from the source and onto other people, thus allowing the central sites to profit from spamming without being called spammers.

Awards: Even if winning an award has absolutely no value people still like recognition. Winners like to talk about what they have won. In some cases you can even give award winners your product to get them to talk about it.

Donations: Support causes you believe in. Money is the fuel upon which charities can fund themselves and spread their messages. It is hard to call you a spammer for donating money to a good cause. If you get a bit of link equity out of it as a bonus why not enjoy the benefits of good karma? Better yet, you might be able to donate software or services to charities at little to no expense to you. How much is an SEO services by link on a PR8 charity site worth in branding and distribution?

Free Samples: This acts similar to donations, except it is easier to spread to a wider audience without appearing spammy, and if people like what you offer they may review it on their sites.

Widgets: Many embeddable tools (like analytics products, what is my PageRank tools, etc) provide static links back to the original source site. Some companies also provide emblems that their site is hosted on a green host or that they support some other cause.

Sponsorships: Many email newsletters are archived online. If you target a compelling offer to the right audience this may lead to additional links. Services like ReviewMe also allow you to put targeted offers in front of audiences who may help spread the word.

Web Directory Submission: An oldie, but an easy one to do. Here is a list of some of the better ones. The editorial guidelines are not as stringent as we are led to believe, and here are tips for getting the most out of your Yahoo! Directory submission. If you like video content here is a video about submitting your sites to directories.

Affiliate Programs: Even if affiliate links do not provide direct link juice, good affiliates still send a relevant stream of traffic to your site. Some affiliate programs also 301 redirect the affiliate links to the end merchant site. Affiliate programs allow clean companies to profit from the dirty parts of the web (think AdSense or Mahalo Follow).

Social Media: Partner with someone who enjoys writing junk for sites like Digg. If you are too lazy for that, StumbleUpon ads allow you to target ads to specific groups on StumbleUpon, and there are a number of Digg spamming services on the market. Here are some tips for link baiting.

Google AdWords or Other Ad Buys: You can buy ads and send targeted traffic streams to your linkworthy content. You can do it one keyword at a time, or target ads to specific websites. In some cases businesses get organic links just because people are talking about how often they see their ads, plus top of mind awareness leads to more usage and more links.

Link Out to Egomaniac Bloggers: This is a way of buying links by paying with your attention and distribution. People like getting mentioned, and are more likely to link to people who agree with them. Seth Godin linked to my blog again a few weeks ago and when I saw he mentioned my site (even if only in passing) for some reason that made me happy. Insightful blog comments are also likely to make a blogger want to talk about you.

Blog Carnivals: Blog carnivals are where a group of bloggers all talk about a topic and mention everyone else in the ring. These amount to a big circlejerk. If your site is legit and a market leader there is no need for this sort of stuff, but if your site is new in a saturated field doing this might be helpful. Plus others in the blog carnival may end up adding your site to their blogroll or talking about you again on their blog.

Press Releases: Do it too often and it looks cheesy, but some mainstream media outlets like CNN syndicate press releases, while others may chose to interview you based on your press release.

Hire Them / Buy Their Brand & Site: If someone already has a large following but is not monetizing it to the full potential consider hiring them and letting them help you build a more profitable business. You can also look for under-performing sites to buy. If someone is outside of your financial reach you may still be able to leverage their brand by interviewing them.

This article is reproduced from http://www.seobook.com/archives/002422.shtml .

5 Steps To A Great SEO Campaign

2011-01-25T19:40:00.000-08:00

5 Steps To A Great SEO Campaign

The first real step to anything is research, and lots of it. The most important step to any SEO campaign is keyword research.

The first step to consider is the niche you are in, and the products or services that you are promoting. You should come up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web.

After that you could use the Google keyword search tool to analyze your list, checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one.

A competitive market analysis is the next important step you should take. After you have your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet with all the keywords, and then list all the competitors from page one of Google.

You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some of the data that you will need, such as their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map and much more. This will tell you how difficult and how long of an SEO campaign you will be embarking on.

Next step should be the on page SEO factors of your website.

First and foremost is content, if you are not providing quality content that solves people's problems then your efforts will be in vain. Great content will keep your visitors coming back on their own which will greatly assist your SEO efforts.

Make sure all the on page dynamics such as header tags, meta tags, alt tags for images and HTML code is done correctly.

These are the simple things that improve your 'findability'. You also want to ensure that you have a proper site map created and submitted to the search engines, this will increase your chances of all your pages being properly indexed.

Number four is off page SEO strategies.

The biggest and most important overall here is back linking. Google views every back link your site has as a vote for your site from someone else. The best back links you can get are called one way links. One way links are where another website links to you without you having to link back. Good examples of this are article marketing, blog commenting and directory submissions.

Reciprocal linking is where you link out to website a and website a in turn links back to you. These are also good links but you should only focus on the ones targeted to your niche and those having a higher page rank than you. Good back linking takes time and effort, this cannot be accomplished over night.

You should also avoid any link scams, link farms or questionable linking strategies. If you have to stop and wonder if it's ok to do it then it probably isn't.

The last step that is very crucial to your SEO success is the overall promotion of your website. There are several ways of effectively promoting your products and services via the internet.

1) Video marketing
This can be promoted in conjunction with your website or separately for added exposure.

2) Email marketing
This allows you to keep track and communicate with your customers and potential customers.

3) Web 2.0
These are blogs, hub pages, wikis and such. Also a great source of quality back links for your site.

4) Article marketing
If done correctly this will establish you as an expert and help you to generate back links and additional traffic to your offers.

5) Local search marketing such as Yahoo local and Google places
If you have a business in the offline world you certainly want to use this method to promote your business. Google places for instance typically will come up first in the search results.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can use to begin a successful SEO and web promotion campaign. The most import step you will take is to take action. Everything you do should be with the intent of growing your business.

do some researches on competitors

2011-01-21T18:59:00.002-08:00

how to analyze competitors' websites? experts like Zac tell us to do researches on three aspects: domain, on-site optimization and visits.

Why do we need a Windows Registry Cleaner?

2011-01-10T19:11:00.001-08:00

Abstract:
Computer is like a car, we need Windows registry cleaner to speed up computer and keep it running smoothly like the first time we boot pc. We will talk about what Windows Registry is at the beginning of this article, and then we will provide you with powerful registry cleaner software at the end.

What is Windows Registry?

The Windows registry is central hierarchical database in Windows system that stores information and options to configure low-level operating system components as well as the applications running on the platform: profiles for each user and the applications installed on the computer; and what hardware exists on the system, the types of documents each can create, property sheet settings for folders and application icons; and which ports are being used. The registry also provides a means to access counters for profiling system performance. The Windows registry is a vital part of Windows. Computer would corrupt if it is damaged. A powerful Windows registry cleaner could also prevent such kind of problems from happening.

Why do we need a Windows Registry Cleaner?

The Windows registry would store configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems and it keeps growing when you use Windows. After a period of usage, it gradually becomes cluttered and fragmented due to obsolete and unnecessary information. At last, the performance of the whole system degrades and weird computer errors start to appear. Because of this, we need a Windows Registry Cleaner to help us deleting unnecessary registry keys and keep it neat. The paragraphs below, we will guide you how to clean registry. Final part of the article, a powerful Windows registry cleaner would be recommended.

How to clean registry and tune up computer in an easy and effective way?

You can choose to clean registry manually or through the help of Windows registry cleaner. But please note that:
Manually cleaning your computer registry should only be attempted by computer experts who understand what the registry entries mean and which registry item relates to which program. The manual registry cleaning is risky. If the essential part of the registry key is removed, computer would crash and might not be able to boot up again.
If you do want to edit registry without Windows registry cleaner, please visit: How to clean registry manually? for more details.

Is there any free, stable and reliable Windows Registry Cleaner?

The answer is yes! A powerful Windows registry cleaner will help you clean registry and tune up your computer safely and effectively. We recommend you to choose TuneUp360, which is stable, powerful and free. This Windows Registry Cleaner could tune up your PC 300% with only 1-click, then you only need to wait 3 minutes and get registry cleaned, junk files removed and Windows errors fixed. Download here, run it after installment. The Windows registry cleaner will scan your computer automatically. Then you should only click on “FIX NOW” button, and have a coffee. It would solve every problem.

How to clean registry manually?

2011-01-10T19:10:00.001-08:00

Abstract:
To clean registry is an essential part of computer optimization. Invalid registry key could cause slow computer even registry crash. You’ll know how to clean registry both manually and automatically from this article.

Why should we clean registry?

A cluttered Registry can slow Windows to a crawl. The Windows registry starts containing information that we no longer need over time. When you remove applications by deleting the program documents directly instead of using the Add or Remove Programs function in the Control Panel, or an object or file in the registry got moved, the invalid registry remained. Finally, orphaned or misplaced registry keys accumulate and begin to clog your computer, slowing down your computer and causing PC errors and system crashes. If you confront symptoms like PC's startup process is becoming slower and slower, you need to clean registry immediately.

How to clean registry?

Method 1:
If you want to clean registry manually by using the Windows Registry Editor, please follow these instructions:
Before you clean registry, you should create a backup of the registry Regedit.exe is always located in system files. Take Windows XP for example, you can find regedit.exe in C (System drive):\WINDOWS. You can directly make a copy or do the following instructions to back up registry: Click the Start button on the left bottom corner of the taskbar on the desktop, and then click Run. Type regedit in the new Run window, and then click OK. A dialog box will appear, at the top of it, click File on the menu toolbar. Go down and select Export. Type a name for the backup file, and click Save.
After creating a backup of your registry, you can start cleaning registry now. Go to the left side of the registry editor and you will know how the computer configured.
Expand a section of the registry editor by clicking on the plus sigh. A "well-used" area for anyone manually deleting registry files is "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE." This area is used to make registry changes to hardware and software.
However, we don't recommend trying to clean registry items on your own. Often, it is difficult to determine which items correspond to which applications, and you don’t know which items are invalid which are essential to you system. And by attempting to remove items yourself, you might accidentally remove a necessary registry item, severe crash might happen to your computer. Turn to reliable software for help is a safe and effective way to clean registry.
Method 2:
Here we provide reliable software for you, TuneUp360. Download the installation procedure from the Internet, and then install it into your computer. It will scan your computer automatically when you run it. Then you just need to press “FIX NOW” button, then it will help you clean registry quickly.

How to clean registry manually?

2011-01-10T19:02:00.001-08:00

Why should we clean registry?

How to clean registry?

Why do we need a Windows Registry Cleaner?

2011-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

What is Windows Registry?

Why do we need a Windows Registry Cleaner?

How to clean registry and tune up computer in an easy and effective way?

Is there any free, stable and reliable Windows Registry Cleaner?

How to fix registry?

2011-01-09T18:32:00.001-08:00

Abstract:

You just made the right decision of trying to learn how to fix registry because this is extremely important for every computer users. This is one essential aspect many Windows users neglected because they don’t know the importance until they have encountered registry problems. Some people spend lots of money on fixing computer. If you want to know how to fix registry, then read on as this is what this article is talking about.
If you want to know how to clean registry and speed up your computer, please visit:How to clean registry manually? / Why do we need a Windows registry cleaner?

Why do we have to fix registry?

It is important to note that registry plays a very crucial of being the storehouse of almost everything; from very important files such as those needed by applications for their normal operations, as well as less important and redundant files. Hence, it is highly vulnerable to various issues and other problems. The registry becomes corrupt predominantly due to installing and un-installing applications or hardware drivers. The more you install and un-install, the more it builds up various junk files which mess up with the important ones and causing errors to occur. Now you understand why you should know how to fix registry, it is because you are going to encounter the trouble in the future, unless you are going to do something about fixing registry. Try to clean registry by yourself now!

How to fix registry?

There are two main ways to fix registry: the traditional way of doing registry fix is to manually clean your system from all junk files, consequently eliminating the errors along the process. However, this method to fix registry could be only applied by the experts because it requires skills to identify data as junk. Making a mistake when you are fixing registry might cause more serious troubles even computer crash. Hence, do not use the procedure to fix registry unless you are competent! Try to clean registry by yourself now!
You can fix registry with the help of tools that allow you to fix registry easily even if you have no previous and present knowledge on the technical aspects of your computer. Here we recommend that you could use TuneUp360. With this software, you can identify your problem and fix registry with only one click. It has friendly interface that makes it easy for you to use!

How to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

2011-01-09T18:30:00.001-08:00

Abstract:
Search history helps web pages you visit frequently load faster via Internet Explorer. But it also wastes much hard disk drive space and makes your Internet browsing public. So it is necessary to clean search history in Internet Explorer. Hereby we will show you how to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7 step by step.

Why should we clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

When you browse a web page through Internet Explorer 7 or another browser at the first time, this web page need be downloaded to your local hard disk drive. This helps web pages you visit frequently load faster by loading the files from your hard disk drive other than downloading them from Internet again. To conserve hard disk drive space or to help keep your Internet browsing private, you may find it necessary to clean Internet History in internet Explorer 7.

How to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

There are two ways to help you clean search history in Internet Explorer 7. The best and easiest way is to do this by TuneUp360. TuneUp360 is free software which can help you to clean search history, cookies, visited websites, registry or junk files automatically within 3 minutes. By this way, you needn’t open Internet Explorer 7.
1. Download TuneUp360 for free. Just right click the download button and check “Save as”. This will take about 1 to 2 minutes which depends on your network speed. The current version is 6.0.1.7.1
2. Install and run it. Double click the setup file and follow instructions to install. In the last step of installation, click “Launch” to run. It will auto-check your computer information, performance, stability and security within 1 minute.
3. Click “FIX NOW” button to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7. All the search history in Internet Explorer 7 will be cleaned within 2 minutes.

Since it is free, you may use it to check computer health and clean search history in internet Explorer 7 daily. It also supports you to clean all other histories in Internet Explorer, other browsers, Windows and applications.
What’s More:
If you are familiar with computer uses, you can also clean search history in Internet Explorer 7 manually by yourself. You may open Internet Explorer 7, click the "Tools" menu, "Internet Options", and click the "Delete Files" or "Delete" button. You also can click the "Advanced" tab and check "Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed" under the "Security" section to make your Internet Explorer 7 clean search history each time you close it.

Note: this way is for Internet Explorer 7 only. It may not apply for other Internet Explorer browsers.
Tips:
1. Clean search history with TuneUp360 will avoid you deleting information by mistake since it will create a Restore Center after each fix. This Restore Center is very useful especially for users who are not familiar with computer.
2. TuneUp360 is not only used for cleaning search history, registry or junk files. The key feature of it is to speed up PC. It provides free computer health check each time you open it. If there are any Windows errors on your computer, it will reports to you. You need only click the “FIX NOW” button to fix all of them.

How to clean address bar history in Internet Explorer 7?

2011-01-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Abstract:
The Address Bar drop-down history of Internet Explorer 7 shows some of the web sites you have recently visited. Other people who have access to your computer and browser Internet through Internet Explorer 7 are able to see the history of web sites you have recently visited. To keep your browsing history private, it is necessary to regularly clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7. The following will guide you how to clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7.

Why should you clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7?

The Address Bar of Internet Explorer 7 is a text box used to enter web sites address in Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 7 allows you to click the down arrow to view the recently visited pages. Therefore, the address bar drop-down history of Internet Explorer 7 shows some of the web sites you have recently visited. Anyone who has access to your computer and starts to type in the address bar of Internet Explorer 7 will get a drop-down URL list with the web sites you've visited. To keep your browsing history private, it is necessary to regularly clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7.

How to clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7?

There are two ways which can help you clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7. The best and easiest way is doing this with TuneUp360. TuneUp360 is free software to clean Address Bar history for Internet Explorer 7.0, 8.0, 6.x and all other browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, MSN Explorer and Safari automatically within only 3 minutes. By this way, you needn’t open Internet Explorer 7 at all.

Step 1: Download TuneUp360 for free

Just right click the download button and check “Save as”. This will take about 1 to 2 minutes which depends on your network speed. The current version is 6.0.1.7.1.

Step 2: Install and run it

Double click the setup file and follow instructions to install. In the last step of installation, click “Launch” to run. It will auto check your computer information, performance, stability and security within 1 minute.

Step 3: Click “FIX NOW” button to clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7

All the Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7 will be cleaned within 2 minutes.
Since TuneUp360 is free, you may use it to clean Address Bar history in internet Explorer 7 daily. It also supports you to clean Address Bar history for other browsers:
clear MSN Explorer drop-down Address bar history;
clear dropdown address bar in Maxthon (MyIE2);
clear drop down address bar history in Firefox;
clear address bar history in Safari;
clear address bar history in AOL;
clear drop-down Address bar history in Opera;
clear dropdown Address bar history in Mozilla;
clear dropdown Address bar history in Netscape.

Another way to clean Address Bar history in Internet Explorer 7

Select "Tools".
Select "Internet Options".
Open the "General" tab.
In "Browsing history" area click the "Delete" button.
To clear drop-down Address bar history, click "Delete history" and then click Yes.
Click Close and then click OK.
Note: the way above is for Internet Explorer 7 only. It may not apply for other Internet Explorer browsers.
What’s more?1. Clean Address Bar history with TuneUp360 will prevent you from deleting information by mistake since it will create a Restore Center after each fix. This Restore Center is very useful especially for users who are not familiar with computer.
2. TuneUp360 can not only clean Address Bar history but also clean registry, Internet temporary files and other junk files. What’s more, the key feature of it is to speed up PC for both home users and busy people. It also provides free computer health check each time you open it. If there are any Windows errors on your computer, it will reports to you. You need only click the “FIX NOW” button to fix all of them. 3. In addition to clearing the browser history, you may also need to go to Tools / Internet Options / Content / AutoComplete / and then press the Clear Forms button to clear out all the typed URLs.

How to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

2011-01-06T17:40:00.001-08:00

Why should we clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

How to clean search history in Internet Explorer 7?

Inbound and outbound links contributing to PR value

2010-12-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

Inbound and Outbound links

Examples of these could be given but it is probably clearer to read about them (below) and to 'play' with them in the calculator.

Questions

When a page has several links to another page, are all the links counted?

E.g. if page A links once to page B and 3 times to page C, does page C receive 3/4 of page A's shareable PageRank?

The PageRank concept is that a page casts votes for one or more other pages. Nothing is said in the original PageRank document about a page casting more than one vote for a single page. The idea seems to be against the PageRank concept and would certainly be open to manipulation by unrealistically proportioning votes for target pages. E.g. if an outbound link, or a link to an unimportant page, is necessary, add a bunch of links to an important page to minimize the effect.

Since we are unlikely to get a definitive answer from Google, it is reasonable to assume that a page can cast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the same page are not counted.

When a page links to itself, is the link counted?

Again, the concept is that pages cast votes for other pages. Nothing is said in the original document about pages casting votes for themselves. The idea seems to be against the concept and, also, it would be another way to manipulate the results. So, for those reasons, it is reasonable to assume that a page can't vote for itself, and that such links are not counted.

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Dangling links

"Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet..........Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly." - extract from the original PageRank paper by Google抯 founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.A dangling link is a link to a page that has no links going from it, or a link to a page that Google hasn't indexed. In both cases Google removes the links shortly after the start of the calculations and reinstates them shortly before the calculations are finished. In this way, their effect on the PageRank of other pages in minimal.

The results shown in Example 1 (right diag.) are wrong because page B has no links going from it, and so the link from page A to page B is dangling and would be removed from the calculations. The results of the calculations would show all three pages as having 0.15.It may suit site functionality to link to pages that have no links going from them without losing any PageRank from the other pages but it would be waste of potential PageRank. Take a look at this example. The site's potential is 5 because it has 5 pages, but without page E linked in, the site only has 4.15.

Link page A to page E and click Calculate. Notice that the site's total has gone down very significantly. But, because the new link is dangling and would be removed from the calculations, we can ignore the new total and assume the previous 4.15 to be true. That's the effect of functionally useful, dangling links in the site. There's no overall PageRank loss.

However, some of the site's potential total is still being wasted, so link Page E back to Page A and clickCalculate. Now we have the maximum PageRank that is possible with 5 pages. Nothing is being wasted.

Although it may be functionally good to link to pages within the site without those pages linking out again, it is bad for PageRank. It is pointless wasting PageRank unnecessarily, so always make sure that every page in the site links out to at least one other page in the site.

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Inbound links

Inbound links (links into the site from the outside) are one way to increase a site's total PageRank. The other is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn't matter. Google recognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into a site, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from. There is an exception to this rule but it is rare and doesn't concern this article. It isn't something that a webmaster can accidentally do.The linking page's PageRank is important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance, if you are the only link from a page that has a lowly PR2, you will receive an injection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8 page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site's PageRank by 0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095. Clearly, the PR2 link is much better - or is it? See here for a probable reason why this is not the case.

Once the PageRank is injected into your site, the calculations are done again and each page's PageRank is changed. Depending on the internal link structure, some pages' PageRank is increased, some are unchanged but no pages lose any PageRank.

It is beneficial to have the inbound links coming to the pages to which you are channeling your PageRank. A PageRank injection to any other page will be spread around the site through the internal links. The important pages will receive an increase, but not as much of an increase as when they are linked to directly. The page that receives the inbound link, makes the biggest gain.

It is easy to think of our site as being a small, self-contained network of pages. When we do the PageRank calculations we are dealing with our small network. If we make a link to another site, we lose some of our network's PageRank, and if we receive a link, our network's PageRank is added to. But it isn't like that. For the PageRank calculations, there is only one network - every page that Google has in its index. Each iteration of the calculation is done on the entire network and not on individual websites.

Because the entire network is interlinked, and every link and every page plays its part in each iteration of the calculations, it is impossible for us to calculate the effect of inbound links to our site with any realistic accuracy.

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Outbound links

Outbound links are a drain on a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

When PageRank leaks from a site via a link to another site, all the pages in the internal link structure are affected. (This doesn't always show after just 1 iteration). The page that you link out from makes a difference to which pages suffer the most loss. Without a program to perform the calculations on specific link structures, it is difficult to decide on the right page to link out from, but the generalization is to link from the one with the lowest PageRank.

Many websites need to contain some outbound links that are nothing to do with PageRank. Unfortunately, all 'normal' outbound links leak PageRank. But there are 'abnormal' ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. PageRank is leaked when Google recognizes a link to another site. The answer is to use links that Google doesn't recognize or count. These include form actions and links contained in javascript code.

Form actions

A form's 'action' attribute does not need to be the url of a form parsing script. It can point to any html page on any site. Try it.

Example:

<a href="javascript:document.myform.submit()">Click here</a>

To be really sneaky, the action attribute could be in some javascript code rather than in the form tag, and the javascript code could be loaded from a 'js' file stored in a directory that is barred to Google's spider by the robots.txt file.

Javascript

Example: <a href="javascript:goto('wherever')">Click here</a>

Like the form action, it is sneaky to load the javascript code, which contains the urls, from a seperate 'js' file, and sneakier still if the file is stored in a directory that is barred to googlebot by the robots.txt file.

The "rel" attribute

As of 18th January 2005, Google, together with other search engines, is recognising a new attribute to the anchor tag. The attribute is "rel", and it is used as follows:-

The attribute tells Google to ignore the link completely. The link won't help the target page's PageRank, and it won't help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn't exist. With this attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any other method of hiding links from Google.[TOP]

So how much additional PageRank do we need to move up the toolbar?

First, let me explain in more detail why the values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web.The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn't believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page's PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.

Whether or not the overall range is divided into 10 equal parts is a matter for debate - Google aren't saying. But because it is much harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end than it is at the lower end, many people (including me) believe that the divisions are based on a logarithmic scale, or something very similar, rather than the equal divisions of a linear scale.

Let's assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site's important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That's why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end.

In reality, the base is unlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybe even less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end of the scale.

Note that as the number of pages on the web increases, so does the total PageRank on the web, and as the total PageRank increases, the positions of the divisions in the overall scale must change. As a result, some pages drop a toolbar point for no 'apparent' reason. If the page's actual PageRank was only just above a division in the scale, the addition of new pages to the web would cause the division to move up slightly and the page would end up just below the division. Google's index is always increasing and they re-evaluate each of the pages on more or less a monthly basis. It's known as the "Google dance". When the dance is over, some pages will have dropped a toolbar point. A number of new pages might be all that is needed to get the point back after the next dance.

The toolbar value is a good indicator of a page's PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5 division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division - almost a whole division (toolbar point) between them.[TOP]

Tips

Domain names and FilenamesTo a spider, www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html and domain.com/index.htmlare different urls and, therefore, different pages. Surfers arrive at the site's home page whichever of the urls are used, but spiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working out the PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site's home page. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all of it should have gone to just one url.

If you think about it, how can a spider know the filename of the page that it gets back when requestingwww.domain.com/ ? It can't. The filename could be index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, etc. The spider doesn't know. If you link to index.html within the site, the spider could compare the 2 pages but that seems unlikely. So they are 2 urls and each receives PageRank from inbound links. Standardizing the home page's url ensures that the Pagerank it is due isn't shared with ghost urls.Example: Go to my UK Holidays and UK Holiday Accommodation site - how's that for a nice piece of link text ;). Notice that the url in the browser's address bar contains "www.". If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you will see that the page has PR5. Now remove the "www." part of the url and get the page again. This time it has PR1, and yet they are the same page. Actually, the PageRank is for the unseen frameset page.

When this article was first written, the non-www URL had PR4 due to using different versions of the link URLs within the site. It had the effect of sharing the page's PageRank between the 2 pages (the 2 versions) and, therefore, between the 2 sites. That's not the best way to do it. Since then, I've tidied up the internal linkages and got the non-www version down to PR1 so that the PageRank within the site mostly stays in the "www." version, but there must be a site somewhere that links to it without the "www." that's causing the PR1.

Imagine the page, www.domain.com/index.html. The index page contains links to several relative urls; e.g.products.html and details.html. The spider sees those urls as www.domain.com/products.html andwww.domain.com/details.html. Now let's add an absolute url for another page, only this time we'll leave out the "www." part - domain.com/anotherpage.html. This page links back to the index.html page, so the spider sees the index pages as domain.com/index.html. Although it's the same index page as the first one, to a spider, it is a different page because it's on a different domain. Now look what happens. Each of the relative urls on the index page is also different because it belongs to the domain.com/ domain. Consequently, the link stucture is wasting a site's potential PageRank by spreading it between ghost pages.

Adding new pages

There is a possible negative effect of adding new pages. Take a perfectly normal site. It has some inbound links from other sites and its pages have some PageRank. Then a new page is added to the site and is linked to from one or more of the existing pages. The new page will, of course, aquire PageRank from the site's existing pages. The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.

So, although adding new pages does increase the total PageRank within the site, some of the site's pages will lose PageRank as a result. The answer is to link new pages is such a way within the site that the important pages don't suffer, or add sufficient new pages to make up for the effect (that can sometimes mean adding a large number of new pages), or better still, get some more inbound links.

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Miscellaneous

The Google toolbar

If you have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, you will be used to seeing each page's PageRank as you browse the web. But all isn't always as it seems. Many pages that Google displays the PageRank for haven't been indexed in Google and certainly don't have any PageRank in their own right. What is happening is that one or more pages on the site have been indexed and a PageRank has been calculated. The PageRank figure for the site's pages that haven't been indexed is allocated on the fly - just for your toolbar. The PageRank itself doesn't exist.

It's important to know this so that you can avoid exchanging links with pages that really don't have any PageRank of their own. Before making exchanges, search for the page on Google to make sure that it is indexed.

Sub-directories

Some people believe that Google drops a page's PageRank by a value of 1 for each sub-directory level below the root directory. E.g. if the value of pages in the root directory is generally around 4, then pages in the next directory level down will be generally around 3, and so on down the levels. Other people (including me) don't accept that at all. Either way, because some spiders tend to avoid deep sub-directories, it is generally considered to be beneficial to keep directory structures shallow (directories one or two levels below the root).

ODP and Yahoo!

It used to be thought that Google gave a Pagerank boost to sites that are listed in the Yahoo! and ODP (a.k.a. DMOZ) directories, but these days general opinion is that they don't. There is certainly a PageRank gain for sites that are listed in those directories, but the reason for it is now thought to be this:-

Google spiders the directories just like any other site and their pages have decent PageRank and so they are good inbound links to have. In the case of the ODP, Google's directory is a copy of the ODP directory. Each time that sites are added and dropped from the ODP, they are added and dropped from Google's directory when they next update it. The entry in Google's directory is yet another good, PageRank boosting, inbound link. Also, the ODP data is used for searches on a myriad of websites - more inbound links!Listings in the ODP are free but, because sites are reviewed by hand, it can take quite a long time to get in. The sooner a working site is submitted, the better. For tips on submitting to DMOZ, see this this DMOZ article.

Internal linking contributing to PR value

2010-12-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

Internal linking

Fact: A website has a maximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internal links.

The maximum PageRank in a site equals the number of pages in the site * 1. The maximum is increased by inbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites. We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page. You don't have to take my word for it. You can reach the same conclusion by using a pencil and paper and the equation.

Fact: The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases.

The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has. Again, by using a pencil and paper and the equation, you can come to the same conclusion. Bear in mind that the only pages that count are the ones that Google knows about.

Fact: By linking poorly, it is possible to fail to reach the site's maximum PageRank, but it is not possible to exceed it.

Poor internal linkages can cause a site to fall short of its maximum but no kind of internal link structure can cause a site to exceed it. The only way to increase the maximum is to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.(so, as many as possible new contents is needed)

Cautions: Whilst I thoroughly recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site's total PageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain types of pages that should notbe added. These are pages that are all identical or very nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them to be spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly the entire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.(so, no identical pages and duplicated contents are necessary)

What can we do with this 'overall' PageRank?

We are going to look at some example calculations to see how a site's PageRank can be manipulated, but before doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That's according to Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can't be included in the calculations.For the examples, we are going to ignore that fact, mainly because other 'Pagerank Explained' type documents ignore it in the calculations, and it might be confusing when comparing documents. Thecalculator operates in two modes:- Simple and Real. In Simple mode, the calculations assume that all pages are in the Google index, whether or not any other pages link to them. In Real mode the calculations disregard unlinked-to pages. These examples show the results as calculated in Simple mode.

Let's consider a 3 page site (pages A, B and C) with no links coming in from the outside. We will allocate each page an initial PageRank of 1, although it makes no difference whether we start each page with 1, 0 or 99. Apart from a few millionths of a PageRank point, after many iterations the end result is always the same. Starting with 1 requires fewer iterations for the PageRanks to converge to a suitable result than when starting with 0 or any other number. You may want to use a pencil and paper to follow this or you can follow it with the calculator.

The site's maximum PageRank is the amount of PageRank in the site. In this case, we have 3 pages so the site's maximum is 3.

At the moment, none of the pages link to any other pages and none link to them. If you make the calculation once for each page, you'll find that each of them ends up with a PageRank of 0.15. No matter how many iterations you run, each page's PageRank remains at 0.15. The total PageRank in the site = 0.45, whereas it could be 3. The site is seriously wasting most of its potential PageRank.

Example 1

Now begin again with each page being allocated PR1. Link page A to page B and run the calculations for each page. We end up with:-

Page A = 0.15

Page B = 1

Page C = 0.15

Page A has "voted" for page B and, as a result, page B's PageRank has increased. This is looking good for page B, but it's only 1 iteration - we haven't taken account of the Catch 22 situation. Look at what happens to the figures after more iterations:-

After 100 iterations the figures are:-

Page A = 0.15

Page B = 0.2775

Page C = 0.15

It still looks good for page B but nowhere near as good as it did. These figures are more realistic. The total PageRank in the site is now 0.5775 - slightly better but still only a fraction of what it could be.

NOTE:

Technically, these particular results are incorrect because of the special treatment that Google gives todangling links, but they serve to demonstrate the simple calculation.

Example 2

Try this linkage. Link all pages to all pages. Each page starts with PR1 again. This produces:-

Page A = 1

Page B = 1

Page C = 1

Now we've achieved the maximum. No matter how many iterations are run, each page always ends up with PR1. The same results occur by linking in a loop. E.g. A to B, B to C and C to D.View this in the calculator.

This has demonstrated that, by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank and by good linking, we can achieve a site's full potential. But we don't particularly want all the site's pages to have an equal share. We want one or more pages to have a larger share at the expense of others. The kinds of pages that we might want to have the larger shares are the index page, hub pages and pages that are optimized for certain search terms. We have only 3 pages, so we'll channel the PageRank to the index page - page A. It will serve to show the idea of channeling.

Example 3

Now try this. Link page A to both B and C. Also link pages B and C to A. Starting with PR1 all round, after 1 iteration the results are:-

Page A = 1.85

Page B = 0.575

Page C = 0.575

and after 100 iterations, the results are:-

Page A = 1.459459

Page B = 0.7702703

Page C = 0.7702703

In both cases the total PageRank in the site is 3 (the maximum) so none is being wasted. Also in both cases you can see that page A has a much larger proportion of the PageRank than the other 2 pages. This is because pages B and C are passing PageRank to A and not to any other pages. We have channeled a large proportion of the site's PageRank to where we wanted it.

Example 4

Finally, keep the previous links and add a link from page C to page B. Start again with PR1 all round. After 1 iteration:-

Page A = 1.425

Page B = 1

Page C = 0.575

By comparison to the 1 iteration figures in the previous example, page A has lost some PageRank, page B has gained some and page C stayed the same. Page C now shares its "vote" between A and B. Previously A received all of it. That's why page A has lost out and why page B has gained. and after 100 iterations:-

Page A = 1.298245

Page B = 0.9999999

Page C = 0.7017543

When the dust has settled, page C has lost a little PageRank because, having now shared its vote between A and B, instead of giving it all to A, A has less to give to C in the A-->C link. So adding an extra link from a page causes the page to lose PageRank indirectly if any of the pages that it links to return the link. If the pages that it links to don't return the link, then no PageRank loss would have occured. To make it more complicated, if the link is returned even indirectly (via a page that links to a page that links to a page etc), the page will lose a little PageRank. This isn't really important with internal links, but it does matter when linking to pages outside the site.

Example 5: new pages

Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'll use the calculator to demonstrate these.

Let's add 3 new pages to Example 3 [view]. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let's link them into the site.

Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A [view]. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A's PageRank has almost doubled.

There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google's index, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A [view]. You can play around with the links but, from page A's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.

It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages.

Examples summary

You can see that, by organising the internal links, it is possible to channel a site's PageRank to selected pages. Internal links can be arranged to suit a site's PageRank needs, but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure that Google spiders them.

Today I discuss with a friend about "What is Page Rank"

2010-12-29T22:49:00.000-08:00

Today I discuss with a friend about "What is Page Rank". In my opinion, Page Rank(I will mention PR below) is a definition depending on each page but not a whole site. But my friend think it is depending on a site. He said: each website only has one PR value. I can't agree with him. So I searched by Google and look into some documents. Hereby are some opinions I think would support my opinion.

All contents below are cited from internet sources except those put in parenthesis.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as "PR".

Notes:

Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.(I disagree since a new site would also has PR0 but it usually isn't a penalty)

How is PageRank calculated?

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.
We can think of it in a simpler way:-
a page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)
"share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.
A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.
From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,.....PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.
Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.
Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly, as we'll see later.
Ok so far? Good. Now we'll look at how the calculations are actually done.
For a page's calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank "voted" for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page's PageRank was calculated.
The equation shows clearly how a page's PageRank is arrived at. But what isn't immediately obvious is that it can't work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-
Step 1: Calculate page A's PageRank from the value of its inbound links
Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn't been worked out yet, so page A's new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can't be accurate.
Step 2: Calculate page B's PageRank from the value of its inbound links
Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can't be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.
It's a Catch 22 situation. We can't work out A's PageRank until we know B's PageRank, and we can't work out B's PageRank until we know A's PageRank.
Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can't we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.
The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn't produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google does at each update, and it's the reason why the updates take so long.
One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page's actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

NOTE:
You may come across explanations of PageRank where the same equation is stated but the result of each iteration of the calculation is added to the page's existing PageRank. The new value (result + existing PageRank) is then used when sharing PageRank with other pages. These explanations are wrong for the following reasons:-
1. They quote the same, published equation - but then change it
from PR(A) = (1-d) + d(......) to PR(A) = PR(A) + (1-d) + d(......)
It isn't correct, and it isn't necessary.
2. We will be looking at how to organize links so that certain pages end up with a larger proportion of the PageRank than others. Adding to the page's existing PageRank through the iterations produces different proportions than when the equation is used as published. Since the addition is not a part of the published equation, the results are wrong and the proportioning isn't accurate.
According to the published equation, the page being calculated starts from scratch at each iteration. It relies solely on its inbound links. The 'add to the existing PageRank' idea doesn't do that, so its results are necessarily wrong.[TOP]

Share my blog with "Follow" button on the right side(as shown in the picture)

2010-12-29T22:27:00.000-08:00

According to Blogger's new function, I strongly recommend you share my blog by clicking the "Follow" button on the right side of each post(as shown in the picture below). This will take you little time at the first time but will be more convenient for you to receive my new posts about SEOClass. Thanks a lot.